game ball

[victor steinbok]

All true, but check the Jack Matheson brawl story (1947). The home team is
required to supply a specific number of game-ready balls in the NFL (it's
some ridiculously high number, but I don't recall what it is exactly--45?
80?). So the "game ball" today is purely ceremonial, except in the basic
usage of "the ball that's in play". This was not the case pre-1950s--the
award game ball was /the/ ball.

VS-)

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 4:02 AM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Clearly, this is not /the/ game ball, since the game has not been played
> > yet. Or is this the ball that's already been set aside to become /the/
> game
> > ball? If that's not enough, here's another one from the same period:
> >
>
> That may well have been the actual game ball that she had, in the ense
> that it was going to be used for the kickoff or some such, having been
> "blesed" by the ceremonial queen of the game.
>
> And since teams often have a supply of balls for game use - this isn't
> peculiar to baseball - the game ball given as an honor may be only one
> of several such balls. Or it could be the particular ball used in
> scoring the winning point. Etc.
>
> --
> -Wilson

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